Benchmarking performance management systems

The Balanced Scorecard and associated performance management approaches, has become a widely practiced and popular management reporting method in recent times. Moreover, enabling technology, which assists in the delivery and personalisation of corporate performance information, is having a deeper and more rapid impact than ever before. This paper presents a brief comparative benchmarking study of leading enterprise performance management systems. Also, the author discusses the merits of bespoke internet technology development and out-of-the-box portal functionalities. An analysis of key business drivers and implementation risks of such approaches is highlighted via a case study example, and concludes the paper

Web Services as Product Experience Augmenters and the Implications for Requirements Engineering: A Position Paper

There is currently little insight into what requirement engineering for web services is and in which context it will be carried out. In this position paper, we investigate requirements engineering for a special kind of web services, namely web services that are used to augment the perceived value of a primary service or product that is itself not a web service. We relate requirements engineering to a common enterprise architecture pattern and derive from this a number of research questions for further study

1st INCF Workshop on Global Portal Services for Neuroscience

The goal of this meeting was to map out existing portal services for neuroscience, identify their features and future plans, and outline opportunities for synergistic developments. The workshop discussed alternative formats of future global and integrated portal services

OntoWeaver S: supporting the design of knowledge portals

This paper presents OntoWeaver-S, an ontology-based infrastructure for building knowledge portals. In particular, OntoWeaver-S is integrated with a comprehensive web service platform, IRS-II, for the publication, discovery, and execution of web services. In this way, OntoWeaver-S supports the access and provision of remote web services for knowledge portals. Moreover, it provides a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model and represent knowledge portals, and thus is able to offer high level support for the design and development process. Finally, OntoWeaver-S provides a set of powerful tools to support knowledge portals at design time as well as at run time

Integration via Meaning: Using the Semantic Web to deliver Web Services

Presented at the CRIS2002 Conference in Kassel.-- 9 pages.-- Contains: Conference paper (PDF) + PPT presentation.The major developments of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the last two years have been Web Services and the Semantic Web. The former allows the construction of distributed systems across the WWW by providing a lightweight middleware architecture. The latter provides an infrastructure for accessing resources on the WWW via their relationships with respect to conceptual descriptions. In this paper, I shall review the progress undertaken in each of these two areas. Further, I shall argue that in order for the aims of both the Semantic Web and the Web Services activities to be successful, then the Web Service architecture needs to be augmented by concepts and tools of the Semantic Web. This infrastructure will allow resource discovery, brokering and access to be enabled in a standardised, integrated and interoperable manner. Finally, I survey the CLRC Information Technology R&D programme to show how it is contributing to the development of this future infrastructure

An active, ontology-driven network service for Internet collaboration

Web portals have emerged as an important means of collaboration on the WWW, and the integration of ontologies promises to make them more accurate in how they serve users’ collaboration and information location requirements. However, web portals are essentially a centralised architecture resulting in difficulties supporting seamless roaming between portals and collaboration between groups supported on different portals. This paper proposes an alternative approach to collaboration over the web using ontologies that is de-centralised and exploits content-based networking. We argue that this approach promises a user-centric, timely, secure and location-independent mechanism, which is potentially more scaleable and universal than existing centralised portals

Systematising Learning and Research Information

This paper considers the ways in which information of relevance to the learning and research communities is organised and used. It contends that there is considerable overlap between the different types of online resources and information currently available within education. It describes some of the structured environments and data stores that have emerged in recent years, along with standards which are attempting to define the properties of discrete learning objects, through the specification of Learning Object Metadata (LOM). The paper contends that current developments of structured learning environments such as Managed and Virtual Learning Environments (MLEs and VLEs) are occurring on the whole in parallel to resource data stores, such as information gateways and portals. This discrepancy has arisen in part because these developments have occurred independently of one another and in part because there has to date been no rigorous definition of the underlying theoretical models. Furthermore, it argues that these predefined structured environments are unlikely to be sufficient to meet the information needs of users in different contexts. The paper goes on to describe an information toolkit, which provides a way of systematising information handling in learning and research, which helps users articulate information plans within specific contexts. The paper concludes with a description of two case studies which illustrate how this toolkit can be used

Tailoring information about climate change and its impacts

Resultaten van onderzoek naar klimaatverandering en de mogelijke effecten zijn vaak niet beschikbaar in een vorm waarin ze direct door anderen gebruikt kunnen worden. Gebruikers van klimaat- en impactinformatie hebben vaak ook geen goed overzicht over de beschikbare gegevens van alle sectoren en resultaten zijn soms inconsistent